Tories boast £3bn efficiency savings

Paymaster general Francis Maude told the Tory party conference yesterday that the government had made a £3bn of efficiency savings by reducing government spending.

Maude said the cabinet office had now reviewed over 300 capital projects and cut £1bn from their £3bn bill. He also said he had saved money by reducing the previous government’s £450m annual spend on advertising.

He said: “In total these initiatives will save the British taxpayer around £3bn just in this financial year.”

The press office was not immediately able to say whether or not this was in addition to the £6.2bn of cuts announced within two weeks of the Coalition taking office, and the further £2bn of cuts in advance of the government’s emergncy budget.

The news comes in advance of a speech today by chancellor George Osborne where he is expected to lay out the case for the severe spending cuts the government is committed to, including reducing the government’s head office civil servants by a third, and scrapping child benefit for high earners.

Maude said he had spent the summer renegotiating major government contracts with suppliers, including contractors, in order to bring the costs down.He said: “We’ve been negotiating contracts with the government’s biggest suppliers, dealing with them as a single customer instead of letting them play one part of government off against another. Usually we’re their biggest customer, so we’re entitled to get handsome discounts.

“Negotiating this wasn’t the most glamorous way to spend the first part of August. but so far we’ve saved several hundred million pounds just in this financial year alone.”